It snowed in the night.  When I awoke around half past four there was an orangy-glow in the gaps of the window blinds and my first thought was, 'It's snowed.'  Funnily enough only yesterday evening W and I were 'crowing' because the map of the weather on television showed swathes of Britain covered in the stuff, whereas Manchester area was unaffected. Big laughs all round, because it's nearly always us who gets the lot being bordered by the Pennine Hills the clouds need to rise up to fly over and ooops they dump the lot on Lancashire and Yorkshire.  It's been really bitterly cold for the past few days even the magpies have been staying in their nests.  When we were children you hardly ever saw magpies in the towns, you felt really lucky to be able to shout, "Morning Captain!" Or "Morning Mr Magpie, how is your Lady wife and family?" and salute  if you happened to spot one, now you'd be thought as mad as a hatter in a sock factory if you went about saluting all the time.  There are so many of them chattering and bounding around you'd have repetitive strain injury!  They're beautiful colours if you really look at them, iridescent blue, green and purple.  My brother had a friend at school who kept a Jackdaw as a pet, it used to talk he tells me.  I have a very vague memory of seeing it one day, it was upon the boy's shoulder out in our back yard.  Was it speaking?...I can't remember.  I wish I had a pet jackdaw now or even a pet crow.

'Krahe'  Artist: Rud Hurzlmeier